The quest to keep loving brothers and sisters fooled by fun and fanship.

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The pagan bedrock under the Christian soil, which feeds the flowers in the atheist's garden. Spring is the manifestation of forgiveness - someone said. Winter is coming, mind.

Good for you, of course - and more power to you. My Christian spirit is waning, however.

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Christianity via church is like a keeping the soil rich to allow for a rare chance of true Christ-following wonders to happen, and they do, ocassionally. The nowadays* church (it's non-degraded entities) is kind of a severe reduction of the Master's teaching, dry, stingy and scholarly, yet extremely important and useful to keep the chance alive. A current Christian spirit as I see it is a helping behavior and a moral stance by description. Very rarely - the wind and fire, transformation and cleansing - the properties of the true Israel God's spirit reigning at the origins of Christianity. But even moderate good intents and efforts are valuable in these days. So let's pray in the true spirit.

*Nowadays - novadējies - makes a lat-en translanguage play on words. Novadējies alus - the one that has stayed open for too long and lost it's liveliness. Still drinkable.

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Novaadeejis alus - tas man ir jauns vaards - but not a new concept: sounds like a 'Mild', which is what old guys would drink to avoid problems with gas.

I like your view of the Christian spirit. I have sometimes achieved ... I don't really know how to describe it - a deep peace and love after praying (in my own way) before challenging moments. And I found it helped a lot - it affected how other people around me behaved, too. They were calmer and less troubled. Sceptics can be sceptical: that's okay. It worked (and sometimes 'works') for me. It generated something deeper than rational understanding (and a conditional forgiveness), and though I wouldn't find it in the dry choreographed theatre of a Church service, you are right - the origins of it for many of us come from there. - at least as far as we can see.

When you talk of the Israelite God, I can't help feeling that Yahweh had an altogether more conditional attitude to love and forgiveness: something more human - or maybe more extra-terrestrial.

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Yes, praying before important events is like, ok, whatever comes, I ask for it to be according to the greater good purpose which I cannot see due to restrictions of my severely limited individual knowledge boundaries. That sets the inner self to be less ego-driven and more humble. With such an attitude other people will feel and act in your presence in a less competitive, rather collaborative way. We cannot circle out some well-hidden divine presence as an answer to the prayer, though, yet we won't be able to prove it either, only observe the outcome.

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